


Only: She Told Him That She Loved Him

by Neaborealis



Category: Original Work
Genre: Cute Couples, Cutesy stuff, F/M, M/M, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Original Story - Freeform, Original Universe, Tumblr, r/, reddit, reddit inspiration, relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-03-01 03:22:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13285914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neaborealis/pseuds/Neaborealis
Summary: Inspired by a reddit/tumblr post I came across a while back:If you place ‘only’ anywhere in this sentence you get different meanings:“She told him that she loved him.”Six different situations, four characters. Many possibilities.





	Only: She Told Him That She Loved Him

****1\. Only, she told him that she loved him.** **

 

“You’re telling me that she lied to him this whole time?” Julian shook his head with disbelief.

“Yeah! That’s the crazy thing, I mean I don’t know if a single word she told him was true. Her parents, her friends, the hospital visits, the arrest...”

“To be betrayed like that,” Julian’s voice trailed off and Nick gave a half-hearted smile of understanding to his best friend.

“So, he dumped her, right? This whole thing can be put in the past?”

“Yeah, Mike finally dumped her after she admitted to everything, but..” Nick stammered, not knowing quite how to word it.

“But what?”

“I’m not saying she didn’t deserve it, but I saw her running to her car after school, and dude, she was a mess.”

“Really?” Julian frowned. “Considering the way she treated him, I didn’t think she cared much about their relationship.”

“I thought the same, thought it was just some dumb high school fling. But, she called him last night, sobbing, and he was expecting the same old bullshit. Only, she told him that she loved him.”

 

****2\. She only told him that she loved him.** **

 

“So, she’s off and gone then?”

Julian nodded in affirmation. “A whole year abroad. I’m not quite sure what he’s going to do without her.”

“Quite an exciting last night in the States though.”

“I’m sure we’ll hear a lot about it from Mike for the next couple months,” Julian laughed.

“Watching the sun set, bonfire on the beach, dancing in the moonlight,” Nick laughed, eyes crinkling at the corners. “There must have been a bit of alcohol mixed in there as well.”

Julian grinned back. “I don’t doubt it.”

A silence settled into the lull of the conversation and Julian hummed contentedly.

“What’d you think about setting Mike up with that new girl from Calculus in a couple weeks?” Nick asked casually, but it felt forced, rushed.

“What do you mean?” Julian stopped humming, giving his friend a weird look. “You don’t think they’ll break up that soon?”

Nick pursed his lips, considering his words carefully before speaking. “I don’t know if you can break up when you were never really official to begin with.”

“What are you talking about? He said that she-”

“I know what he told us, but she never said they were together.” Nick sighed. “She never said she’d be faithful. She only told him that she loved him.”

 

****3\. She told only him that she loved him.** **

 

“I don’t understand why she acted like their relationship was some kind of secret. It was so obvious that they were together,” Julian mused.

“I don’t know if it was that, so much as it was her trying to keep some sense of dignity and sophistication.” Nick responded, staring up at the clouds through the scattered branches of the oak. “You know what her parents think of wild displays of affection.”

His friend scoffed in response. “I’ve lived nextdoor to her my entire life and I don’t think I’ve seen her parents show each other the tiniest bit of affection even once.”

“I guess that's where she gets it from. They’re just not like your typical hormonal teenagers.” Nick smirked to himself. “At least we didn’t have to deal with any slobbery make out sessions in the hallways.”

Julian chuckled. “No arguments there.”

“I mean it’s not like they don’t care for each other,” Nick rambled on, “Mike’s told me plenty of times himself. They just don’t feel like it’s anyone else’s business.”

“I suppose I kind of understand it, but she doesn’t even say it to her friends. She never mentioned it to anyone else.”

Nick nodded absentmindedly. “She told only him that she loved him.”

 

****4\. She told him only that she loved him.** **

 

“I don’t even know what to say.” Julian clenched his eyes tight, fighting back the tears threatening to well up and drip down onto the comforter.

“There’s nothing to say,” Nick whispered, clenching his hand tightly, seated next to Julian on his bed.

“She can’t just be gone, it’s just not possible,” Julian struggled to get his words out. Nothing made sense. None of this was true. None of it could really be happening. It was all a mistake. It _had_ to be.

Nick’s hand clenched tighter around Julian’s. He didn’t know what to say, what to do, how to feel. The silence was suffocating.

“We’re lucky that Mike survived,” he said, not that it would do any good to say it out loud. It didn’t make her death hurt any less. She’d been as much their friend as Mike was.

There was nothing they could have done to stop it. The drunk driver had collided head-on with the driver’s side at sixty miles per hour.

Julian finally spoke, quietly at first. “It’s just, I mean I wasn’t there, I didn’t see it. So how can it be true? The world doesn’t look different. The world doesn’t _feel_ different, so then how can she be gone?” The tears were flowing hotly, silently down his cheeks, dripping into his lap. He kept going, unable to keep it in any longer, his voice rising with emotion. “Because if she were really gone, everything would feel different. The world itself would change. But everything remains the same. How can it, when nothing is as it was?”

Nick clutched Julian’s hand to the point of pain, afraid that if he let go, he and the world around him would unravel completely.

“Did she say anything to Mike? After the crash?”

“Not much,” Nick replied, his voice uncomfortably thick with repressed tears. “She told him only that she loved him.”

 

****5\. She told him that she only loved him.** **

 

“Oh my _god_ ,” Nick sputtered, his mouth gaping wide.

“I couldn’t believe someone could be _that_ idiotic, but that’s what she said happened.”

“You’re telling me, the _night before prom_ , he went to a house party,” he raised his eyebrow at Julian in disbelief, “then, not only got drunk, but when some _other_ idiot asks for a ride home, decides to get behind the wheel of a car.”

Julian nodded in affirmation. “And that’s not even the worst of it.”

“There’s more?” Nick gaped.

“Oh yeah,” Julian continued, “The police showed up moments later to break up the party, and since his friend had drugs on him, he tells Mike to hit the gas, so Mike _ran_ from the _police_ while _under the influence_ , and then, because he was drunk, _crashed_  into a telephone pole , _totaling his car, and earning himself a week in juvie_.”

“What the hell was he thinking?”

“Who knows, honestly.” Julian sighed. “Craziest part of it is that I doubt she’s even going to dump his pathetic ass.”

“She forgave him?” Nick furrowed his brow in confusion.

“Not quite. He asked her to, but she said she couldn’t trust him anymore.”

“Good for her,” Nick interjected.

“She said everything else between them was gone. She told him that she only loved him.”

 

****6\. She told him that she loved only him.** **

 

“It’s been years since they last spoke,” Julian murmured, perplexed. “They were so close once, but...well I guess life moves on whether you want it to or not.”

“I suppose going to colleges halfway across the country from each other didn’t help either,” Nick added. “Still, quite a coincidence that they ran into each other like that.”

“It almost seems like fate.” Julian’s eyes twinkled as he clasped the hot mug between his hands and stared out the rain glazed window.

“Considering how vastly different their lives are now, I suppose it could be.”

“So what happened?”

“Well, they run into each other, and he almost doesn’t recognize her at first, but they’re both headed the same way and get to talking.” Nick paused, and Julian leaned in attentively.

“And?”

“And he ends up asking her out to coffee, and she says yes, and then one coffee turns to another, and within a week, they’re just as crazy for each other as they used to be.”

“Almost as crazy as I am for you?” Julian asked, and Nick blushed, grinning from ear to ear.

“Almost,” he said, “but not quite.”

Julian leaned across the table to plant a kiss on his boyfriend’s lips.

“What about all those other guys in between? She certainly got around,” Julian wondered aloud, sipping his tea.

“I asked him about that too,” Nick replied. “I guess they didn't matter. She told him she loved only him.”


End file.
